News tagged with ocean floor

Tahiti corals clue to 'dynamic' glaciers

Apr 24, 2009 | 5 / 5 (4) | 6

(PhysOrg.com) -- Fossilised corals from tropical Tahiti show that the behaviour of ice sheets is much more volatile and dynamic than previously thought, a team led by Oxford University scientists has found.

Exploring hidden life’s abundance

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Feb 12, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (5) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Two miles below the surface of the Sargasso Sea lies a depression in the Earth’s crust filled with sediment and, scientists believe, teeming with life — exotic, microscopic, and very likely ...

No joy in discoveries of new mammal species -- only a warning for humanity, Paul Ehrlich says

Biology /

Feb 09, 2009 | 2.5 / 5 (17) | 9

In the era of global warming, when many scientists say we are experiencing a human-caused mass extinction to rival the one that killed off the dinosaurs, one might think that the discovery of a host of new species would be ...

Decline of carbon-dioxide-gobbling plankton coincided with ancient global cooling

Biology /

Jan 08, 2009 | 4.6 / 5 (12) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- The evolutionary history of diatoms -- abundant oceanic plankton that remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year -- needs to be rewritten, according to a new Cornell ...

Discovery of giant roaming deep sea protist provides new perspective on animal evolution

Biology /

Nov 20, 2008 | 4.5 / 5 (28) | 3

Groove-like tracks on the ocean floor made by giant deep-sea single-celled organisms could lead to new insights into the evolutionary origin of animals, says biologist Mikhail "Misha" Matz from The University ...

Ocean floor geysers warm flowing sea water

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Sep 22, 2008 | 4.3 / 5 (8) | 0

An international team of earth scientists report movement of warmed sea water through the flat, Pacific Ocean floor off Costa Rica. The movement is greater than that off midocean volcanic ridges. The finding suggests possible ...